Marc My Words: Five Reasons to Use Performance Support

“The fact is that frontline managers and executives are increasingly looking for ways to get better results from their people without taking them away so much from the work. They are pushing for this, whether they use the term ‘performance support’ or not. Are we listening? This has important implications for us.”

Want to learn
about performance support? Read The eLearning Guild’s just-published white
paper, At the Moment of Need: The Case for Performance Support. Get your boss to read it, share it with
your colleagues, and discuss it with your team. But, inevitably, someone will
ask you to give a quick “elevator speech” about why you should use performance
support. Here are five good reasons.

Performance support comes in many flavors

First, a definition: Performance support is
a tool or other resource, ranging from print to technology-supported, which
provides just the right amount of task guidance, support, and productivity
benefits to the user, precisely at the moment of need. There are many variations of this definition, just as there are many
variations of performance support types.

Performance support can be as simple as a job aid that reminds us of the things we
have to do, in the order we have to do them, so we don’t have to memorize everything.
Recipes and assembly instructions are classic examples. Performance support can
be an online information resource that helps us find quick answers to questions.
Wikipedia may have its issues, but think of how work in your organization might
be different if every job has a Wikipedia-like resource to support it. Performance
support can also be an online tool that helps us make decisions (sometimes
referred to as decision support). Examples range from selecting the right
investments to picking the right pet.

Performance support is often a blinding flash of the obvious;
just look around

Is there a
document no one understands, a process that’s too hard to follow, or a software
application that doesn’t work right? You know them when you see them … yet
instead of fixing the problem, we often use (or someone tells us to use)
training to compensate for the bad document, teach a work-around to the bad
process, or provide coping strategies for the irritating software. The next
time these documents, processes, and tools are up for revision, try performance
support. Build it into the solution to provide the assistance people need—when they
need it. Better still, build performance support into new documents, processes, and tools at inception, to insure that
they, and the people who use them, work better and smarter from day one.

Performance support makes money

Training is
expensive. The expense is often justified, but how much time and how many resources
can any organization really devote to it? The productivity of employees in
training is zero. Instead, what if we could embed more performance support into
the workplace? What if, instead of taking a course, even eLearning, we could
consult an online knowledgebase, quickly and easily? Or, instead of looking for
an expert to show us how to do something, the system could demonstrate it to
us? We get precisely the information and help we need, precisely when we need
it. And we get back to work much, much faster.

Scalability
enhances these economies further. You can scale performance support used by
small groups to serve entire organizations very quickly and cost-effectively. There
are no additional instructors to staff, no extra classrooms to build, no travel
to pay for, and, most important of all, no extended downtime from the job. Beyond
employees, think of how performance support can lower the cost of providing customer
service and enhancing customers’ satisfaction.

Performance support improves training

Do you have too
many multi-day classes filled with endless PowerPoint presentations, which are
not as effective as you would like? The best training is evolving away from
this, focusing more on problem solving, teamwork, innovation, experimentation,
ideation, and creative solutions to business challenges, all guided by an
instructor who is more coach than lecturer. Where does performance support fit
in?

Performance
support is a critical component of this new learning model. You can spend much
more class time using performance support in the context of real-world work
issues. In-class practice with performance support can be very beneficial when
learners return to the workplace because they’ve already had experiences with
the tools they need to do their jobs better. And good eLearning, provided
before or after an instructor-led class (or instead of one), could fulfill the
same role, helping people use the actual tools they will need to be successful
on the job. And all those PowerPoint slides? Many can be moved to online
knowledgebases that can be accessed anytime and anywhere.

If we don’t, someone else will

Moving to performance
support is inevitable, not as a replacement for training, but as another option
in our toolkit that will likely change when and how we train. Productivity and efficiency aside, approaching every performance
problem with training is simply not affordable. If we pulled everyone off their
job for training (classroom or online) on everything they need to know or do, no
real work would ever get done. Moreover, if we allow sub-optimal tools and resources
to exist in the workplace while suggesting that someone else will fix those
problems … you know what? Someone else will. The fact is that frontline
managers and executives are increasingly looking for ways to get better results
from their people without taking them away from the work so much. They are
pushing for this, whether they use the term “performance support” or not. Are
we listening? This has important implications for us.

For the training
and eLearning community—managers, designers, instructors, and more—the
challenge is clear. We do not abdicate learning by moving to performance
support, we enhance it. Our clients and customers still value high-quality
training, but if we show them the potential of performance support, they will
value us more.

Want to learn more?

The Performance Support Symposium 2013, September 9 – 10 in
Boston, Massachusetts, offers you an exceptional opportunity to discover how
you can optimize investments in training, eLearning, and mLearning by
integrating performance support across your organization. You are invited to
join other senior learning professionals for this deep exploration of
strategies, case studies, best practices, and technologies for performance
support. It’s time to transform performance across your enterprise. You will
find more information, a video overview, a downloadable brochure on the symposium,
and registration information here.

Thank you! Regarding your 2nd reason, the "blinding flash," my team supports new and existing product releases. Whenever an engineer points to me and says "This will be confusing, make sure you train everyone how it works," I point right back to them and say "Give me a performance support link in that page!" Users are not compelled to click the help link in the banner, but if there is a "What's this?" or "How does this work?" link next to the field/column/function that is hard to understand, there is a PS clue that they should look into it before proceeding. I have used the same technique when whole pages were redesigned, and successfully reduced support calls after the release.

07/30/2013 4:12 pm by eLearningBros

Thanks Marc. In my past I built many hours of online/classroom training for the financial services industry. Some type of support was always needed as a "take away". There isn't any way that a person can remember all of the information that we tried to pump into their brains during the class. Also....they didn't really need to remember all of the various financial transaction coded. They really just needed to know how to quickly find/use them. Is seems that being fully trained now-a-days is just knowing how to find the information that you need quickly.

Workers today are on the move, and mobile untethers them. We are fascinated by mLearning, but mLearning barely taps the ability of mobile technology to deliver business benefit. Adding mSupport to your strategy delivers immediate and measurable business impact, paves the way for a more sustainable mobile learning strategy, and offers three critical outcomes to organizations.

Even the best training initiatives are no match for work environments where well-trained employees
cannot directly apply their learning. With insights from today’s leading performance support experts,
Marc Rosenberg underscores the need for a new performance framework in a white paper from The
eLearning Guild, At the Moment of Need: The Case for Performance Support.

Most workplace learning happens outside formal training course and classes. To effectively support
and improve job performance, learning content must also be available when the learner needs it.
Here are some tips from experts to get your learners the content they need when and where they
need it. For more tips from these experts and others, sign up for the April 11 Online Forum!